Epidemic cerebro-spinal meningitis and its relation to other forms of meningitis : a report to the State Board of Health of Massachusetts / Report made by W.T. Councilman, F.B. Mallory, and J.H. Wright.

  • Wright, James Homer, 1869-1928.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Epidemic cerebro-spinal meningitis and its relation to other forms of meningitis : a report to the State Board of Health of Massachusetts / Report made by W.T. Councilman, F.B. Mallory, and J.H. Wright. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    tomatic. Notwithstanding the infrequency of the skin lesions and their varying character, the disease continued to be named petechial or spotted fever. North describes the disease from his personal experience with it, and appends to this various other accounts which have been given by contemporaneous authors. North divided the disease into two types depending on the more or less rapid course of the disease and the intensity of the symptoms. Dr. Samuel Woodward,75 in a newspaper printed in Hartford, describes an epidemic in Litchfield County in 1807. In the same paper, Dr. Bestor, after giving an excellent account of the clinical course of the disease, says that, though it has been attributed to various causes, he is convinced that the “immediate cause of the disease is the increase in the sensorial power of sen- sation with the decrease of the sensorial power of irritation.” The book of North also contains a description of the disease by Dr. Fiske, “ Sketch of Spotted Fever” (“Massachusetts Spy,” April 9, 1810), “Observations on Anomalous and Irregular Diseases,” by Dr. Williamson (Baltimore, 1808; letter to Philadelphia Med- ical Museum), and a collective report from Drs. Haskel, Spooner and Holmes, who were a committee appointed at Farmington, Conn., to investigate the disease. Hirscli39 divides the history of the disease into four periods. The first, from 1805 to 1830, shows the disease in isolated epidem ics in various places in Europe, but more generally in the United States. In the second period, from 1837 to 1850, the disease became prevalent in wide-spread epidemics in France, Italy, Algiers, the United States and Denmark. During the third period, from 1854 tq 1875, it reached its widest diffusion throughout most of Europe, the adjoining countries of Asia, the United States and some parts of Africa and South America. The fourth period, from 1876 to the present day, shows a return in slight epidemics of more or less considerable groups of cases in various countries, but par- ticularly in the United States, Germany and Italy. In this last period there has been very little of the disease in France. In the first period it was seen in Canada in 1807 ; in Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio, in 1808 ; in New York and Pennsylvania, the year after.